Saving Grace

By David Geffner, Photos by David Miezal

Published Jan 1, 2008 9:00 AM

The Kindest Cut

On the eve of the second in a series of complex facial surgeries, the outgoing and personable Mankin says it was hard coming to terms with his devastating injuries. "I had reached a point where it was like: 'This is me. This is what I'm going to look like for the rest of my life.' And then I heard about this program at UCLA ... It's not just all the medical expertise or technology; it's the heart and passion these individuals have for my family and me."

The Mankins learn from Timothy Miller M.D. '63, chief of reconstructive and plastic surgery, that Aaron's next procedure, where a skin flap is brought down from the forehead to build a new nose, will also require a tracheostomy to protect his damaged airway. The tube could be in for up to a year. "That's intimidating," Mankin says in a soft, wheezy rasp. Miller, a silver-haired surgeon who knows a soldier's hardships better than most, nods emphatically.

After graduating from UCLA Medical School in the '60s, Miller completed a one-year internship in Tennessee before spending a year in BAMC's burn unit and then another year in Vietnam. Last summer he performed four reconstructive surgeries free of cost on a 12-year-old Iraqi girl whose nose was sheared off in a missile attack.

"Cpl. Mankin and Sgt. Mikeworth [Darron Mikeworth, Operation Mend's second patient, who lost his left eye and large portions of his face to an Iraqi car bomb] have given me a heck of a lot more than I've given them," the surgeon states flatly. "They put their lives on the line. This is the least I can do to repay them."

Miller strode into the operating theater for Cpl. Mankin's first surgery wearing his jungle camouflage hat from Vietnam; when asked about the difficulty of his next procedure, the surgeon deadpanned, "On a scale of 1-10, it's about a strong 14."

"I can do 14," the Marine shot back. "It's the 15 you have to worry about."

Fortunately, The Katz Family Foundation pays all uncovered costs for the Mankins, as it will for all Operation Mend patients, including lodging for Aaron's parents, his wife, and 10-month-old baby girl, Maddie. And case manager Priscilla "Patti" Taylor, a former U.S. Army nurse who has served in Vietnam and the Middle East, watches over the soldiers like a proud den mother. "We're making quilts of valor for them," she explains. "It's a military tradition and a small token of thanks for the sacrifices of these young men."

Laws, not Lawlessness

It's not only wartime combatants that Bruins have been helping. In March of last year, Phillip Carter '97, J.D. '04 voluntarily deployed himself to Iraq as a U.S. Army active reservist, where he used his legal skills to affect change, and, in at least one case, salvage a young Iraqi's life ["Renaissance Soldier," UCLA Magazine, January 2007].

Carter, an Army officer for nine years with military police and civic affairs, went to Baqubah to train policemen. When he and his team saw evidence of torture and unlawful detention in the jails, they began a campaign of applied pressure to influence judicial reforms. "Seeing people with holes in their legs created by power drills is something you never forget," Carter, now an attorney in New York City, relates. "But witnessing the systemic abuse that comes from a nation dumping people in jails and forgetting about them is, in some ways, even more difficult to tolerate."

The lawyer/soldier says his years at UCLA instilled a "passion" for determining right from wrong that helped fuel his mission in Iraq. Over a three-month period, Carter asked enough questions and documented enough cases of abuse to help reduce overcrowding in one Iraqi facility by nearly 50 percent. He earned the release of a 14-year-old boy, imprisoned as bait for a crime committed by the boy's brother, by appealing to a local judge. And enemy gunfire and roadside bombs could not prevent Carter from making regular visits to Hamid Abboud, a 46-year-old storeowner imprisoned in 1998 for killing a man in self-defense, released and granted amnesty four years later, and then re-arrested in 2004 for a term of 20 years. "Fighting a counter-insurgency is like the graduate level of warfare," Carter explains. "The military needs more people from top-flight universities. Especially for a war like this."